The existence and the proceedings of Mr. Hugh Flaxman had a very considerable share in it.

'Tell me about Mr. Langham,' said Mr. Flaxman once to Agnes Leyburn, in the early days of his acquaintance with the family; 'is he an old friend?'

'Of Robert's,' replied Agnes, her cheerful impenetrable look fixed upon the speaker. 'My sister met him once for a week in the country at the Elsmeres'. My mother and I have been only just introduced to him.'

Hugh Flaxman pondered the information a little.

'Does he strike you as—well—what shall we say?—unusual?'

His smile struck one out of her.

'Even Robert might admit that,' she said demurely.

'Is Elsmere so attached to him? I own I was provoked just now by his tone about Elsmere. I was remarking on the evident physical and mental strain your brother-in-law had gone through, and he said with a nonchalance I cannot convey: "Yes, it is astonishing Elsmere should have ventured it. I confess I often wonder whether it was worth while." "Why?" said I, perhaps a little hotly. Well, he didn't know—wouldn't say. But I gathered that, according to him, Elsmere is still swathed in such an unconscionable amount of religion that the few rags and patches he has got rid of are hardly worth the discomfort of the change. It seemed to me the tone of the very cool spectator, rather than the friend. However—does your sister like him?'

'I don't know,' said Agnes, looking her questioner full in the face.

Hugh Flaxman's fair complexion flushed a little. He got up to go.

He is one of the most extraordinarily handsome persons I ever saw,' he remarked as he buttoned up his coat. 'Don't you think so?'

'Yes,' said Agnes dubiously, 'if he didn't stoop, and if he didn't in general look half-asleep.'

Hugh Flaxman departed more puzzled than ever as to the reason for the constant attendance of this uncomfortable anti-social person at the Leyburns' house. Being himself a man of very subtle and fastidious tastes, he could imagine that so original a suitor, with such eyes, such an intellectual reputation so well sustained by scantiness of speech and the most picturesque capacity for silence, might have attractions for a romantic and wilful girl. But where were the signs of it? Rose rarely talked to him, and